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Reframing Ishiguro's oeuvre through the Japanese militarist in The White Countess
Author(s) -
Cheng Chuchueh
Publication year - 2019
Publication title -
orbis litterarum
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.109
H-Index - 8
eISSN - 1600-0730
pISSN - 0105-7510
DOI - 10.1111/oli.12241
Subject(s) - narrative , literature , white (mutation) , art , hero , militarism , plot (graphics) , romance , repetition (rhetorical device) , philosophy , history , linguistics , politics , law , biochemistry , chemistry , statistics , mathematics , political science , gene
The White Countess (James Ivory, 2005), a screenplay Kazuo Ishiguro scripts, liberally adapts Junichiro Tanizaki's novel The Diary of a Mad Old Man . Upon its first release, the film was not well received among reviewers. Few scholars have paid attention to the film, and even fewer to the Japanese militarist, Mr. Matsuda. Among the film reviews that mention Matsuda, remarks on him are generally sketchy and incidental. The obscurity of the film and the Japanese figure in Ishiguro studies is peculiar and thus worthy of investigation. This essay considers The White Countess a different medium that Ishiguro takes on to address his thematic concerns, and Matsuda a novelistic device which he applies to the cinematic narrative. It purports to illustrate the significance of the Japanese figure in the film, and then through him to situate the film properly within the discourse of Ishiguro's oeuvre. Three of Jacques Derrida’ s concepts, graft , margin , and frame inform this essay's theoretical tactics: repetition in variation, margin as center, and circuitous self‐revelation. The theoretic trio helps explain why the Japanese figure is inserted in the romance, how his presence frames the cinematic narrative, and what his deceptively marginal position discloses about Ishiguro authorship that remains to be explored.